The Incredibly Ugly Answer To Being Too Lazy, Untalented, And/Or Unclever To Become Wealthy And Successful
Just a suspicion on my part, but I'd guess that's where a tweet like this one is really coming from:

Maybe if the people of Bel-Air opened their enormous and outrageously expensive homes to the homeless or helped the homeless in their community their houses wouldn't have burned down. Just a thought. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Homeless people are sometimes mentally ill or meth users. Is the average little old widow really equipped to provide homeless services?

Of course, plenty of wealthy people are benevolent. Not all are. But that is absolutely their choice.

Because I think of what's effective, I would suggest that those who want wealthy people to be charitable persuade them -- as I did in my TED talk, "The surprising self-interest in being kind to strangers" -- that it's in their self-interest: that their lives will be more meaningful and they'll thus be more at peace and even happier if they extend themselves for others.

Does he take in the homeless to sleep on his couch? Because, as economist Robert Frank points out, wealth is relative. If you have a roof and a couch, you have more than the homeless guy outside 7-Eleven. Even if you just have a roof and a rug, you've got more.

Hey, @filmmichaelcOX, let us know when you'll be passing on a spare set of keys to that dude who makes his "home" by the 7-Eleven trash can.

The Problem With "Believe Women!"
I don't "believe women!" -- nor do I simply "believe" any person who accuses another of a crime.

What I believe is that we need to look for evidence that a crime has been committed, and if it is not there or substantial enough -- or it's been lost or mishandled -- the accused must be set free.

This sometimes means guilty people will get away with their crimes. But it is essential that we not punish the innocent -- stealing decades of a person's life from them and locking them in a cage.

In 2015, the AP reports that this is what happened to a man named Clarence Moses-EL -- all the way back in 1988:

Clarence Moses-EL was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to 48 years in prison for raping and assaulting a woman when she returned home from a night of drinking. When police initially asked who attacked her, she named the man who later confessed.

More than a day after the assault, while in the hospital, the woman identified Moses-EL as her attacker, saying his face came to her in a dream.

Moses-EL has long claimed he was innocent. But his efforts to appeal his conviction were unsuccessful, in part because Denver police threw away DNA evidence from the attack. Police destroyed body swabs and the victim's clothing despite a judge's order to preserve it for testing that could have confirmed Moses-EL's guilt or innocence.

The case inspired legislation requiring the preservation of DNA evidence in major felony cases for a defendant's lifetime. Lawmakers also took the rare step of sponsoring a bill ordering a new trial for Moses-EL, but it was scrapped after then-Gov. Bill Ritter, a former prosecutor, threatened to veto it.

His break came in December 2013 when another man, L.C. Jackson, sent him a letter in prison saying he couldn't believe Moses-EL was accused of raping the woman because he 'had sex' with her at the same time that night.

'I really don't know what to say to you, but let's start by bringing what was done in the dark into the light,' Jackson wrote, according to court documents. 'I have a lot on my heart.'

The letter led to a hearing in July, where Jackson testified that he became angry during sex with the woman and hit her in the face. The woman told police that she was lying down to sleep when a man put his hands around her neck and raped her.

As a Denver judge read the words "not guilty" Monday afternoon, Clarence Moses-EL tapped his fist to his mouth, as if suppressing the urge to shout for joy inside the somber courtroom.

For 29 years, Moses-EL had insisted he did not rape and beat a neighbor in 1987. After 28 years in prison, two trials, lost DNA evidence and an accuser who identified him in a dream, he was vindicated.

"It's over!" someone yelled as Moses-EL walked out of a courtroom at Denver's Lindsey-Flanigan courthouse, where about a dozen supporters cheered and applauded.

The not guilty verdict on charges of first-degree sexual assault, second-degree assault and second-degree burglary ended a long, painful saga for Moses-EL. But it also left a 29-year-old rape unsolved and a victim who will not see justice.

It isn't just in these criminal rape cases that we're supposed to just "believe"; as media reporter Eric Wemple puts it in the WaPo:

Now comes the cryptic story of Ryan Lizza's defenestration as a staff writer at the New Yorker, where he served as Washington correspondent starting in 2007. A statement from the magazine reads like this: "The New Yorker recently learned that Ryan Lizza engaged in what we believe was improper sexual conduct. We have reviewed the matter and, as a result, have severed ties with Lizza. Due to a request for privacy, we are not commenting further."

More:

Lizza rejected his employer's conclusions: "I am dismayed that The New Yorker has decided to characterize a respectful relationship with a woman I dated as somehow inappropriate. The New Yorker was unable to cite any company policy that was violated. I am sorry to my friends, workplace colleagues, and loved ones for any embarrassment this episode may cause. I love The New Yorker, my home for the last decade, and I have the highest regard for the people who work there. But this decision, which was made hastily and without a full investigation of the relevant facts, was a terrible mistake."

I don't know Lizza and we have no idea who the woman is.

Why should we "believe" anyone?

And what's with these news outlets just expecting us to take for granted that whatever accusation is being made is for real?

Wemple feels differently:

The New Yorker is a magazine that occupies an exalted position in the public trust. It publishes stories on matters of tremendous consequence, and Lizza has been a big part of that mission. If the New Yorker botches any of those stories, it owes the public a full explanation with appropriate corrections and so on. If, on the other hand, it determines that a particular personnel action is appropriate after an internal investigation, it owes the public very little -- which is precisely what it has given us.

Ridiculous Crapthink: "Eek, We're About To Become Lesotho, Where Girls Aren't Even Safe At The Grocery Store"
Absolutely silly op-ed in the LA Times. In America, a few extremely powerful men in show biz and politics got away with sexual harassment and worse -- and we get compared with Lesotho.

The headline of the Ashley Harrell piece:

What happens when society ignores sexual assault? You get Lesotho, where girls aren't even safe at the grocery store

Oh, please. Africa is a violent, backward, and lawless place, to a great extent.

I spent three weeks in the country, dodging unwanted advances and hearing stories of frequent, unpunished sexual assaults. It was the most threatening environment for women that I had ever navigated. If somehow you still don't recognize the sweeping scale of sexual assault, if you think women across the world don't need to fight for each other with everything we have, try visiting Lesotho, where holding a man accountable for sexual violence is almost impossible.

...The epidemic of sexual violence against women in this nation of 2.2 million people is arguably the worst in the world, but it is rarely reported. The problem, women's rights advocates say, begins in childhood. Girls are taught to be compliant, to quietly endure suffering and to serve men.

The director of a local aid organization told me grown men regularly flirt with her 8-year-old daughter in the grocery store, capitalizing early on a grossly unequal power dynamic. UNICEF found that 19% of girls under 18 in Lesotho are forced into (illegal) marriages, oftentimes with older men. The rate of new HIV infections is the highest in the world (one in four people have the disease) thanks in no small part to a virtual army of Harvey Weinsteins preying on economically disadvantaged young women.

This sort of ridiculous hysteria -- that our country is anything like a place where 19% of teenaged girls are forced to marry -- makes things here cumulatively worse, not better.

This is the safest, most modern, most individual rights-driven country in the world.

If you are in a profession where there's a great deal of money and power, there are likely to be sociopaths of various stripes who will prey on you -- whether you're a man or a woman.

No, sexual assault should not be ignored, but we also don't help ourselves by turning an invitation out for a drink by a co-worker into some sort of victimization.

If it isn't your boss trying to manipulate you into the sack when you want no such thing; if there's no quid pro quo; if requests for a date stop when you ask for them to stop (or maybe after the second time), do you really need to identify as a victim?

Or...could you maybe identify as somebody whose co-worker asked them out, who wasn't interested, and who made that clear?

People have conflicting goals and desires. Any two people. Heterosexual men negotiate these with each other. They're very comfortable with it -- as am I, no matter what sex or sexuality you are or have.

If one person isn't holding the other down or saying "fuck me, or you lose your job..." ...If there's merely a need for a mild rebuff (like, "Sorry, I don't date co-workers), well, this seems to me like a normal part of adult life.

I predict two things from the current hysteria (where, say, a stolen kiss from a drunken co-worker is equated with Harvey Weinsteining and may even be seen as a firing offense):

1. Employers will think twice about hiring women, especially when they have the option of hiring a commensurately qualified male.
2. Men will start seeing escort workers in larger numbers than ever, and it will become more acceptable than it's ever been to pay for sex.

And check this out. There's this notion that it's HORRIBLE and TERRIBLE if someone makes an unwanted pass at you. I'm not talking about somebody raping you. I'm talking about an attempt to kiss you that you duck.

There's something wrong in modern life -- and we see it on campus, with the notion that emotional discomfort should not be tolerated and the conflation of emotional discomfort and a physical attack.

We've gotten used to modern comforts that make our life easier -- to the point where we have become utter pussies about the slightest discomfort. As I noted the other day, this is the antithesis of the message in Nassim Nicholas Taleb's Antifragile:

In "Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder," risk researcher Taleb, a former derivatives trader, explains that antifragile is "the exact opposite of fragile" -- but it goes beyond "resilience or robustness." Antifragile describes the way living things are improved by stressors -- becoming better, stronger, and more able to cope with difficult, unpredictable stuff that comes their way.

Before long, some other country will invade ours, and all we'll do in response is sit on the curb and cry.

We're Now Poisoning The Kids With The Sexual Assault Panic
Who here hasn't accidentally grazed a boob in their time?

It's always been a thing to laugh at when I've done it -- while, I dunno, reaching for something at a party.

But now -- sickeningly -- a 9-year-old boy was treated like he'd done something wrong when, in playing co-ed soccer and lunging for the ball, his hand grazed the "private parts" of a girl (as Lenore Skenazy put it).

Melanie Gorman, the mom, writes that her son was actually sent to the principal's office for touching the girl "inappropriately."

Disgustingly, a thing we all knew to shrug off in childhood -- an accidental graze in rough 'n' tumble play -- the mother of the girl reported to the principal.

In fact, the mother reportedly told the principal that her little girl had become uncomfortable around the little boy.

(Just guessing where that "uncomfortable" came from. See my note above -- I don't recall anybody ever thinking anything of this kind of thing. Gorman blames it on the "no bad touch" admonishing kids get. Kids have had that for a while, and I think this sort of sex panic spreading to the world of 9-year-olds is a new thing. Correct me if I'm wrong -- and I know you will.)

Gorman writes:

The mere words "he touched her" in the principal's note made my entire body go cold. But in my race to react, I remembered that I needed to be a parent and not react. I needed information. I needed his side of the story.

So I asked, "Honey, what happened at school yesterday?"

And he told me a very different tale than the principal's note. He told me that he and the girl were playing soccer and they both went for the ball to block the goal. When they did, he accidentally touched her private parts.

I said, "Did you mean to do that?"

He said, "No, I was just trying to block the goal. So was she."

End of story.

The truth -- according to witnesses and the little girl herself -- was that two 9-year-old kids were innocently playing soccer and they both tried to block a goal, and she was touched -- by my son.

He didn't hurt her. He didn't reach out and try to touch her. It was an accident.

As I moved away from feeling terrified that he had hurt her, I felt a deeper sense of shame. Why did I think those things were possible for my son?

What has happened to our world that my instinctive reaction was that somehow he did something wrong?

That yet another male hurt yet another female?

That one more victim was made?

That her word carried more weight than his side of the story?

That the boys are always to blame?

Disgustingly, the principal wanted the little boy to apologize to the girl. Sadly, the mother appears to have gone along -- though she hems and haws a bit to justify this.

This story and that outcome make me sick -- and sad that kids are being poisoned like this.

The Terrible California Fires
A tweet -- as I look over at the painting my bubbie gave me, and glance at pretty yellow fake flowers on a ledge by my writerdesk that Nancy Rommelmann took from her writerdesk and sent me for my 50th birthday.

Beyond how terrible it is to lose a home, even if you and your loved ones and pets are safe, the small things of "no value" are actually so valuable -- the painting nobody would ever buy that your late grandma did that you reminds you of her. https://t.co/zRblUE61xr

However, I love California and the melange of people who have come here -- sometimes from way across the world, at great hardship -- because they want a part of the magical landscape and the social, intellectual, and business opportunity.

Philly Pols' Bill To Endanger The Lives Of Convenience Store Owners
This is just wildly wrong, and another sign that government has gone from overly meddling to obscenely meddling in citizens' lives.

Fox29 reports that Philly bureaucrats and politicians are moving to pass a bill that requires convenience store owners to remove the bulletproof plexiglass that stands between them and customers:

It's called the 'Stop and Go' bill and is being offered by City Councilwoman Cindy Bass.

"Right now, the Plexiglas has to come down," she said.

She says she wants to put some controls on these small stores that, from her point of view, sell booze, very little food and are a source of trouble for her district.

"We want to make sure that there isn't this sort of indignity, in my opinion, to serving food through a Plexiglas only in certain neighborhoods," Councilwoman Bass said.

My dad had a permit for concealed carry so he could protect himself when he went downtown to dicey areas. He didn't carry it to insult people in those neighborhoods; he carried it because he wanted to come home at night, not be sent to the Coroner's in a big black zipped bag.

If you operate a business in a dicey area -- or one you perceive to be dicey -- or if you just have a thing for plexiglass, it is less than none of the government's business to tell you that you cannot have plexiglass.

Perhaps the Councilwoman could work on measure to reduce crime in "certain neighborhoods" rather than effectively asking people to go, "Yoohoo, criminals, I've got $786 dollars in the cash register. Please come rob me at gunpoint."

I like this guy's tweet:

"How can we push out the last remaining retailers in our area?" - Philly legislators.

And it actually gets way more meddling'y than pols just going after some establishments' bulletproof barriers. You feel safer with a barrier or you want to go around restocking in a tutu -- why should that be any politician's business?

The Sexual Nursery School Rules We're Now Supposed To Live With
A number of really terrific and very happy couples I know met in the workplace. How many potential couples are now doomed because -- well, what guy in his right mind would ask a co-worker out or even flirt in the slightest of ways?

Any woman could be a bomb waiting to explode his career and more over a "can I buy you a drink?"

That would have sounded crazy just a few months ago, but now it's the new normal -- and that's not a good thing. It conflates real abuse -- persistent harassment (sexual -- or otherwise) and/or quid pro quo sexual harassment and a hostile work environment -- with normal mating behavior.

And as I wrote at Quillette, it infantilizes women, "instructing women that they are fragile, passive, powerless victims who need authority figures to advocate for them."

At Slate, executive editor Allison Benedikt -- who's been married for 14 years to a guy who was first her boss -- writes the most sensible stuff I've read in recent months on workplace romance, flirting, and passes:

It is completely within the norm of human exploratory romantic behavior for people to take steps--sometimes physical steps--to see if the other person reciprocates their feelings. It is OK to flirt with a person who you aren't sure wants to be flirted with. It is OK to not be 100 percent great at reading signals. It is even OK to be grossed out by someone's advances, as long as those advances stop once you make clear you aren't into it. There are predators and harassers, even more of them than I thought, and there are some lines that are simple to draw, even if we haven't been enforcing them until now. But there has to be room for a relationship like mine to happen. And the difference between John being my husband and my harasser cannot just be that it worked out. The difference between actions that can get you married and actions that can get you fired can't simply be whether or not the person you are interested in is interested back. Careers should end when someone tries, and is rebuffed, and does not heed that rebuffing. Careers should not end just because someone tried. We're not all attracted to the people who are attracted to us.

Of course not all workplaces are the same, and I have no interest in arguing that every office should be flirty and fun, or that all bosses should feel free to flirt with abandon. My point is not that I know where the line is. It's that, even in the midst of the most public reckoning with atrocious and abusive male behavior of my lifetime, the line is not as clear as much of the dialogue would have you think. We spend a huge portion of our waking hours at work, and particularly when you are young and single or childless or divorced or simply working all the time, much of your social life revolves around your colleagues. We have work crushes and work wives and husbands, and sometimes we kiss our co-workers or sleep with them. Sometimes that turns into something real--my husband and I are not the only long-married couple to come out of that now-defunct magazine. But sometimes it turns into everyone at a bar, drinking a little too much, and a man touching a woman's arm or leg or rubbing her shoulder, trying to make a move, and that woman not being into it. That's an uncomfortable situation, but we all make each other uncomfortable sometimes, particularly when sex and attraction are involved. The goal should be for a person to say "no thanks, dude," without consequences, not for rejection to never be necessary at all.

The problem is, the idea that you would sometimes need to say, "No thanks, dude" has been turned into something many women find horrifying.

A Forced Speech Case With A Fact Few Are Paying Attention To: Cake For, Say, Gay Tennis Match Or Bingo Night? No Problem!
I'm a gay rights-lovin' and -supportin' atheist who -- somehow -- realizes that Christian bakers who are opposed to making custom-designed cakes for gay weddings are not necessarily gay haters. They aren't necessarily people who refuse to do business with gay people.

In July, 2012, Charlie Craig and David Mullins went to Masterpiece Cakeshop, a small bakery in Lakewood, Colorado, to order a cake for their upcoming wedding reception.

The owner, Jack Phillips, told them that he would happily provide baked goods for them for other occasions, but he would not create a cake for this event, citing his general policy, based on his religious convictions, against participating in same-sex marriages.

In that very brief conversation--it lasted about twenty seconds, both sides agree--there surfaced a legal conflict between small-business proprietors with strongly held religious beliefs and the rights of gay Americans.

Note this: The owner said to the gay couple that he would happily provide baked goods for them for other occasions...

So the people contending that this is about hating gays and not a case about compelled speech and religious freedom are wrong.

Let's be clear: The cake baker in the case didn't deny service to gays; he refused to make a cake for a gay wedding, based on his religious beliefs.

Again, I am a strong supporter of gay marriage and gay rights in general -- and I am also a supporter of religious freedom and free speech.

Compelled speech -- making somebody create a cake for a wedding that goes against their religion -- is very unfree speech. It's very-much-forced speech. And that's wrong.

It doesn't matter that I find the religious railings against gays and gay marriage backward, damaging, and ridiculous. People are entitled to their religious beliefs.

And this NYT op-ed by law prof Robert P. George and Yale Law School grad Sherif Girgis gets it right on how the First Amendment doesn't just protect your freedom of speech; "guards your freedom not to speak the mind of another":

Thus, in classic "compelled speech" rulings, the Supreme Court has protected the right not to be forced to say, do or create anything expressing a message one rejects.

...On Tuesday, the court will consider whether Colorado may deny Jack Phillips, the owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop, the right to sell custom wedding cakes because he cannot in conscience create them for same-sex weddings. Mr. Phillips, who has run his bakery since 1993, sells off-the-shelf items to anyone, no questions asked. But he cannot deploy his artistic skills to create cakes celebrating themes that violate his religious and moral convictions. Thus he does not design cakes for divorce parties, lewd bachelor parties, Halloween parties or same-sex weddings.

Colorado's order that he create same-sex wedding cakes (or quit making any cakes at all) would force him to create expressive products carrying a message he rejects. That's unconstitutional.

...Our point is not that forcing people to sell a product or service for an event always compels them to endorse the event. It's that forcing them to create speech celebrating the event does. And it's well-established that First Amendment "speech" includes creative work ("artistic speech") ranging from paintings to video games.

Unlike folding chairs or restaurant service, custom wedding cakes are full-fledged speech under the First Amendment. Creating them cannot be conveniently classified as "conduct, not expression" to rationalize state coercion.

...A wedding cake's context specifies its message: This couple has formed a marriage. When the specific context is a same-sex wedding, that message is one Mr. Phillips doesn't believe and cannot in conscience affirm. So coercing him to create a cake for the occasion is compelled artistic speech.

...Note that this argument wouldn't cover all requirements to make artistic items. The law may force photographers to do photo portraits for Latinos as well as whites since that doesn't yet force them to create art bearing an idea they reject, which is all the compelled-speech doctrine forbids. But custom wedding cakes carry a message specific to each wedding: This is a marriage.

If you are opposed to gay marriage -- a thing, again, that I am firmly for -- you should not be forced to make custom cakes for gay weddings. That's ideological slavery, and we need to stand firmly against it.

A Wedding Present For Prince Harry And Megan Markle: American Pols Should Junk Our Horrible Expat-Screwing Tax Scheme
It's called FATCA -- get it? Like "Fat Cat," but so many of the "cats" lives it messes up are ordinary American citizens married to a, say European spouse, and living over there.

Thanks to FATCA, there will be three people in the upcoming royal marriage -- Megan Markle, Prince Harry, and the IRS agent peering into their financial affairs, explains Daniel J. Mitchell at FEE:

Most readers probably wonder how and why the IRS will be involved. After all, Ms. Markle no longer will be living in the United States or earning income in the United States after she marries the Prince.

But here's the bad news (for the millions of Americans who live overseas, not just Ms. Markle): The United States imposes "worldwide taxation," which means the IRS claims the right to tax all income earned by citizens, even if those citizens live overseas and earn all their income outside of America.

More from a previous post, "The IRS Turns Being An American Expat Into A Nightmare."

Here's how my friends Matt Welch and his wife Emmanuelle Richard get their asses bitten by this. In reason, Matt writes:

Preposterous Foreign-Income Disclosure Rules

The IRS wants everyone with more than $10,000 in foreign-based financial institutions to cough up every last detail of every last account. Let's say (just for the sake of argument) that in 1997 you married a French woman who had previously written a few articles for a soon-to-be-defunct UK newspaper, and had opted to park her checks in a London bank for walking around money on future visits. Let's say further that she has earned enough European-based income over the ensuing 15 years to exceed that five-figure savings threshold.

Result? As of 2012, that London savings account, and every single other foreign based account you and your wife may have, must now be divulged in full--complete with your estimation of its highest value during the previous year--to the Internal Revenue Service.

Good luck figuring out form TD 90-22.1, by the way. My tax professional (who charged me more than $1,000 for her services, though it was worth every penny), shrugged, and gave me a yellow highlighter so that maybe I could shed light on the relevant verbiage of TD 90-22.1 and its rich cousin, form 8938. Even the Government Accountability Office has trouble; "Extent of Duplication Not Currently Known, but Requirements Can Be Clarified" was the subtitle on its recent paper on the dueling FBARs (foreign bank account requirements).

The important thing to realize is that by failing to cough up each and every detail of accounts that are filled with your legitimately earned and (in my case) already taxed money, you are subjecting yourself to a $100,000 fine and up to five years in prison.

If you happen to have some money overseas, and are nervous about the U.S. government's ability to harass or imprison you, you're probably better off burying the cash in a can. Or depositing it in a country that doesn't care about playing by Uncle Sam's rules.

The fun continues for those Americans living -- or trying to -- overseas:

Scaring Away Foreign Banks

Uniquely in the world, the United States government is demanding that all foreign financial institutions disclose the details of all U.S.-based accounts and withhold 30 percent in potential taxes from accounts held by other institutions that don't disclose. Let's see, what do you suppose might happen when Washington makes life a living hell for every foreign bank that dares do business with Americans?

Shocker: "Banks no longer want American clients." So if you are one of the estimated 6.6 million Americans living abroad, you can forget about opening or even maintaining that bank account. Sorry! Those 150 minutes of federal spending won't pay for themselves!

And back to Mitchell:

So what's the solution if the royal family wants to avoid the greedy and intrusive IRS?

Ms. Markle will need to copy thousands of other overseas Americans and renounce her citizenship.

The Supposed Horror Of Homeschooling
Interesting observation from a 2012 Kevin Williamson piece at NRO:

The Tea Party and the Ron Paul movement are in some ways the conservative flipside of Occupy, albeit with better manners, more coherent ideas, and higher standards of personal hygiene.

He continues:

They comprise conservatives on the verge of despair at trying to achieve real social change through the process of electoral politics and the familiar machinery of party and poll, with its narrow scope of action, uncertain prospects, and impermanent victories.

His piece is actually about homeschooling:

It is homeschoolers, who, by the simple act of instructing their children at home, pose an intellectual, moral, and political challenge to the government-monopoly schools, which are one of our most fundamental institutions and one of our most dysfunctional.

Williamson says homeschooling is "being practiced in more than 1 million American households, by people of wildly different political and religious orientations."

Homeschooling represents a kind of libertarian impulse, but of a different sort: It is not about money. Homeschooling families pay their taxes to support local public schools, like any other family -- which is to say, begrudgingly in many cases -- and the movement does not seek the abolition of local government-education monopolies. (It should.) Homeschooling families simply choose not to participate in the system -- or, if they do, to participate in it on their own terms.

And that is a step too far for the Hobbesian progressives, who view politics as a constant contest between the State and the State of Nature, as though the entire world were on a sliding scale between Sweden and Somalia. Homeschoolers may have many different and incompatible political beliefs, but they all implicitly share an opinion about the bureaucrats: They don't need them -- not always, not as much as the bureaucrats think. That's what makes them radical and, to those with a certain view of the world, terrifying.

I don't have kids, but I know a former Crossroads teacher hired by several LA families -- wealthy LA parents who pay her to collectively home-school their kids. (Crossroads is a wildly pricey elite LA private school.)

This woman who works as the homeschooling teacher is extremely bright, literate, and also wise about human behavior and how to motivate kids and deal with their issues. Any kid in any school in Los Angeles would be lucky to have her as a teacher. (I always feel lucky to run into her and have a little visit with her thinking on things.)

My mother, likewise, is highly intelligent -- the valedictorian of Mumford High School, then a top or the top high school in Detroit. She taught high school (and was said by my cousin Rolla, who was in one of her classes to be a complete hardass).

She would have been qualified to teach my sisters and me. We would have been lucky to have her, too -- though I would have gotten away with far, far less than I ever did in public school.

In many way(s), teaching my son is easier than laying a tile floor or installing a stove because the kid actually gives me feedback. If I screwed up installing the stove (I didn't), I'd have to find out the hard way. My son isn't shy about saying, "I don't understand." He's just as good at saying, "I get it and I'm bored; can we move on?" If you care enough to listen, that makes it a hell of a lot easier to do it right.

So we spend extra time on division, and some points of grammar. But we whizz through language arts lessons, Spanish, and history at light speed, because he absorbs those lessons quickly--and really enjoys them.

If only porcelain tile were so interactive.

And we follow our own schedule and add and subtract learning experiences as my son expresses an interest. Right now there's a microscope and a pile of petri dishes on my kitchen counter. If we don't unleash a plague, Anthony will continue to satisfy his recent curiosity about microbiology (the plague is actually more likely to come from his clothes hamper). It's just not that hard to follow the kid's interests and make sure to fill in the gaps.

I wanted my parents to send me to a Detroit private school called Roeper, filled with smart weirdos, but they're frugal and figured public school was good enough. Or maybe they just couldn't afford the smart weirdos school.

Kids today in kindergarten get more homework than I had throughout high school. I did very little and got As, for the most part. I was always reading on my own -- so it wasn't like my head was empty. But had I been homeschooled, I would have been challenged and interested -- as I am by the stuff I study every day now. Would have been a far better way to spend those before-college 13 years.

Often, You Can Choose Not To Be A Victim Simply By Acting Like The Antithesis Of A Victim
Laura Kipnis echoes something I wrote about in my piece for Quillette. A bit from my piece:

This doesn't require you to be fearless. You just need to shove your fears aside and do what needs to be done--say, getting up on your hind legs and telling some co-worker, "Stop saying that thing to me" or "...treating me this way."

Now, if they persist after you've told them to stop a few times, that's harassment and you can seek support to get them to stop. But consider that it's less likely to get to that point if you simply act like men's equal--act as if you're powerful--instead of acting like you're a feminist.

Here's Kipnis in NYRB:

Are there vestigial aspects of femininity too that are similarly maladaptive for the modern workplace? The question came to mind as I read Carlson's account of an experience at one of her early jobs: she was riding alone in a car through rural Virginia with a cameraman who suddenly launched into a discussion about how much he'd enjoyed touching her breasts when he put a microphone under her blouse, and kept talking about it, in a "graphic monologue," for the entire trip back to the office. Carlson's response was "sheer terror," she writes. Shaking, she pressed herself against the passenger door, praying she wouldn't have to jump out of the moving vehicle. Once back at the office she was trembling so badly her boss noticed and asked what had happened; feeling sick to her stomach, she told him. (The cameraman was eventually fired over something else.)

It may not win me any popularity contests to ask this next question, but what stopped Carlson from just telling the cameraman to shut up? True, she was a young woman in her early twenties, and recently hired. And he was out of line. But he wasn't her boss. He hadn't threatened her, unless talking grossly about her body is threatening in and of itself. He hadn't groped or fondled or kissed her against her will (all of which I firmly believe should sever a man from his paycheck).

One answer to the question may be that Carlson was socialized female, and a certain delicacy about sexual matters is a long-standing attribute of traditional femininity. (Which makes raunchy jokes by female comedians funnier than those of their male counterparts: more social taboos to violate.) But if we're demanding that men overcome their gender socialization, are there aspects of femininity we might wish to ditch too? Cowering when a man mentions sex transforms it into the equivalent of the master's stick: he merely has to wave it to keep you in line. It's the internalized submission of a colonial mentality--and in fact, left-wing feminists, a dying breed in these Lean In times, used to propose regarding women as "the last colony," including those of us residing in the advanced metropoles.

Perhaps if women unlearned this response we'd fare better--just in case men don't cease waving their sticks immediately. Worse, do we participate in propping up male power--or the aura of power the wielders wish to create--by helpfully trembling on command?

The French have a term, l'esprit de l'escalier, basically "the spirit of the staircase" or "staircase wisdom," describing that remark you think to make in that quarrel with your lover...as you're dashing down the stairs afterward in a huff.

This preplanning thing is like having somebody write the dialogue before the quarrel. If you're somebody who tends to take the timid approach, this is your best bet for meeting an unpleasantly sexual surprise with more than freezing like an animal about to be eaten.

I've been there -- and done that -- but I did it only once, and vowed never to do it again. I haven't. But it took some preparatory thought about what to do the next time.

In other words, you're not wrong or bad or "not much of a woman" if you responded timidly at some point. Just do your best to see that you don't respond timidly again.

Oh, and this doesn't just go for situations with men. It goes for those with ornery lesbians or anybody who's doing something or saying something that really isn't working for you.

Understand A Few Things About Civil Liberties In Our Country, Geniuses, Before You Pull Your Pants Down In Thailand
People who understand and respect how lucky we are to be American citizens, with all the rights we have -- unparalleled by those any other country in the world -- are probably a whole lot less likely to criminally bare their ass in Thailand.

Understanding the difference helps you understand that there are likely to be repercussions -- expensive, diplomat-intervention-requiring repercussions -- when you go to a country that isn't the U.S. and do things that would very likely fly at home (free speech, 'n' all).

Now, sure, it's possible that these two American idiots were just on a drunken binge, but really, the "Hey, check out the U.S. Constitution!" thing might probably carry, even then.

Jonathan Turley writes about the duo, on vacation in Thailand, who bared their asses for a "belfie" -- heh. That's a "below-the-belt" selfie.

Americans Joseph Dasilva, 38, and Travis Dasilva, 36, are facing well-deserved criminal prosecution in Thailand after taking "belfies" where they expose their butts in pictures at famous sites.

This juvenile and disgraceful practice is viewed as funny by the Dasilvas, but it was hardly humorous for the Thais who saw the pictures at Bangkok's Wat Arun, or Temple of the Dawn, as demeaning and insulting.

In this case, the Dasilvas were arrested at the Bangkok airport and each fined 5,000 baht ($154) for baring their buttocks. The married couple is facing charges of public indecency and the United States is now expected to assist them.

So these two travel the world showing utter contempt for historic and cultural sites, then when they get into trouble, the United States spends money and time to try to secure their release from their well-deserved arrests.

Many people felt the same way when President Trump used part of his official trip to China to secure the release of UCLA college basketball players who decided to shoplift in an authoritarian country known for its lack of criminal justice.